Participants

Ideas

Add your ideas below

Anarkim 13:00, 9 November 2010 (CET): I'd like to work on something involving either map overlays/metainformation of funny or really usefull information, try making some simple smart phone apps, or work on something exposing the political bluffs - like extracting all the numbers from Danmarks Statistik relating to foreingners (numbers, costs, etc), or I'd really like to weork on Erdem's democrazy software

nbarnwell: I'm indifferent as to what we work on, but it sounds as though Anarkim has a good idea in visualizing the data on Foreigners in Denmark, a cause close to my own heart.

There's still only very few ideas at the OpenDataDay.org website App ideas.

Being in Denmark we have Danmarks Statistik - I am considering contacting them to figure out how open their data set really is.

I have already contacted Civilstyrelsen and they might be interested if something a little less vague was up. The run retsinformation and lovtidende both sites where danish legeslation is published. Their content contributers are very interesting, but their XML stack and data costs 9,000 kr.

This idea has been rumaging in the back ofy mind for a while: An app called "gotsomething". The idea is to help fascilitate an innovative use of something seemingly useless or worthless, into something valuable, life saving, money making etc. It could be something like typing "got some clear plastic bottles", upload a picture - a while later a set of instructions pop up, describing what to do: "get some water (as clear as you can get), fill the bottles, leave them in the sun for 6-8 hours, do not stir, the water is fitt for drnking or selling, go make some bucks". The app would use a positioning fix, check that for local needs (maybe on the world bank data set, maybe stock exchanges, ???), evaluate best solution... User needs to either make a detailed profile for need determination, or some algorithm can be set up...

Programming Language

Nearly as important as having an idea is having a common language to work in, especially if we're going to get something done in 24 hours. If we're to work on a web app for maximum accessibility's sake we should probably choose something on the level of popularity and ease of use of Rails (Ruby), Django (Python), or Play (Java).

For SCM, my vote is a local git or hg repository, as I suffer from SVN-merge related PTSD.

Suggested Procedure

Organize the weekend by having a plenum brain storm every 6 hours

Heavy use of white boards and flip overs to update schedules

Communal effort to lift a couple of projects fast and expedient

Tidy up the space before, during and after the hackfest

Magic hat food politics - we'll pool money and buy what we can afford, putting more money into the pool will result in more and better food

NB

4th of November a very similar event was held in DK, Data Camp on ITU (IT University) with the goverment IT body (ITST). 17 group/persons managed to present something based on the public data. Don't know how to get at the proceedings but it might be a possible inspiration source.